The serial line protocols, SLIP and PPP, provide the Internet
connectivity for the poor. Apart from a modem and a serial board
equipped with a FIFO-buffer, no hardware is needed. Using it is not much
more complicated than a mailbox, and an increasing number of private
organizations offer dial-up IP at an affordable cost to everyone.

There are both SLIP and PPP drivers available for . SLIP
has been there for quite a while, and works fairly reliable.
A PPP driver has been developed recently by Michael Callahan and
Al Longyear. It will be described in the next chapter.